Walt Whitman’s Democratic Vistas (1871) has become a touchstone of democratic theory. Commentators unusual ideological range uphold the book as politically exemplary. This article demonstrates that recent theoretical celebrations are sanitized and incomplete. I expose antidemocratic side by analyzing (1) its philosophy death (2) politics race. Whitman framed his immortalist response to within a...

The aim of scientific explanation is to characterize the important antecedents of observable (or at least objectively confirmable) events. Explanations of behavior in terms of motivational states are appeals to unobservable, internal events for interpretations of behavior that is variable under apparently constant external stimulus conditions (see, e.g., Brown, 1953; Hinde, 1960). To be identif...

Subjects live with objects1: they observe objects, create objects, and use objects. The τ-theory (the Greek letter “τ” is pronounced as “TAO”, which stands for “Teleology Affordances Ontology”) is a theory about subjects (with purposes) and objects (with properties), and the possible relationships between them. It is rooted in the philosophical branches of teleology, including praxeology (the e...

This paper aims to explore mechanistic and teleological explanations of consciousness. In terms of mechanistic explanations, it critiques various existing views, especially those embodied by existing computational cognitive models. In this regard, the paper argues in favor of the explanation based on the distinction between localist (symbolic) representation and distributed representation (as f...

We consider how to discern whether or not evolution is taking place in an observed system. Evolution will be characterized in terms of a particular macroscopic behavior that emerges from microscopic organismic interaction. We de ne evolutionary activity as the rate at which useful genetic innovations are absorbed into the population. After measuring evolutionary activity in a simple model biosp...

In this paper, we consider a number of phenomena in English, and other languages (Italian, Greek, Russian) involving external arguments where prima facie animacy seems to constrain grammaticality. Our discussion comes to the conclusions that, at least in the cases under analysis, a more appropriate notion should be evoked, i.e. the notion of teleological capability and that the inherent abiliti...

It has been commonly assumed that teleological explanations are unnecessary and have no place in the physical sciences. However, there are indications that teleology is fairly common in the instructional explanations of teachers and students in chemistry classrooms. In this study we explore the role and nature of teleological explanations and the conditions that seem to warrant their use in che...